Yesterday Apple notified indie developed James Thomson that he would have to remove the iOS 8 widget from his calculator app, PCalc. After the news received a good amount of backlash and press attention, Apple has reversed its stance on the issue.

When you live in Apple’s world as a third-party developer, you are required to play by Apple’s rules. And sometimes those rules are subject to sudden change.

James Thomson, the developer behind the scientific calculator app PCalc, was notified today by Apple that his iOS 8 widget must be removed. The reason? A new stipulation that iOS widgets cannot perform calculations.

The reasoning behind Apple’s decision may never be known by Thomson or anyone outside the company, and that’s just the point. The App Store is Apple’s kingdom to rule, for better or worse.

Chances are James isn’t the only iOS developer trying out a little Retina-scale artwork at the moment. There’s still nothing official from Apple, but speculation about the likely resolution of the iPad 3 screen is hotting up since last week’s MacRumors story that claimed to confirm the device’s resolution at 2048×1536.

Apple has finally responded to Lodsys’ patent troll attempts to extort indie iOS devs for using iOS’s In-App Purchasing Mechanism: developers don’t owe Lodsys anything for offering in-app purchases, and if Lodsys cares to press the issue, Apple will be more than happy to step in on behalf of their devs… and wipe the floor with Lodsys.

Patent troll Lodsys — the company who threatened to sue multiple iOS indie devs on Friday for using Apple’s own in-app purchasing mechanism — has responded to the widespread furor over their actions in a series of Q&A posts. And guess what? It turns out we were all wrong about them being dicks. In fact, they’re the real victims here! Boo hoo!

After indie dev James Thomson was threatened with a lawsuit earlier today by a patent troll called Lodsys for using Apple’s in-app purchase mechanism in his pCalc iOS app, his first instinct was to play things cautious and not release the update scheduled for today.

Several hours later, though, and Thomson is feeling bolder: he’s decided to release the update to pCalc anyway. But will the other devs hit with shakedowns today be so plucky and defiant?

Wondering who the mysterious patent troll suing indie devs for using Apple’s own in-app purchasing system is? We still don’t know, but we can add another company to the list of patent houses suing iOS devs… this time not for in-app purchases, but for upgrade links.

The lead developer behind the popular Mac dock replacement DragThing and the fantastic iOS scientific calculator app pCalc is about to be sued for patent infringement because his software uses Apple’s own in-app purchasing mechanism. And he’s not alone.

Not only will the lawsuit delay the latest update to the free version of pCalc, pCalc Lite, it may just be the opening shot in an IP war, not just against Apple, but against the devs who dare to sell their software on the App Store.